Screams in the Night
by dementadoom
Summary: Raphael is woken by the sound of Donatello screaming, and sets out to learn what happened to his beloved brother.


Being a Planet Racer had been one of the highlights of Raphael's life — the racing, the motorcycles and alien obstacle courses practically had made his blood sing with delight. It hadn't lasted long, but he'd always remember the experience with pride.

But a few days after returning to the lair, he stopped talking about it.

It was all because of Donnie. At first Raph hadn't known anything was off — he had been too busy swapping details of his story with Mikey, while Donnie and Leo indulgently listened to them debating whose trip through the universe was more awesome. Donnie had asked plenty of questions, and seemed to be genuinely interested in everything they said. He had laughed at all the right parts, asked all the right questions, and lightly applauded when Raph and Mikey had told them how their adventures ended.

Sure, he didn't talk much about where he'd been or what he'd seen, but that wasn't abnormal for Donnie. He was the quiet one. He didn't boast, or put himself forward, or anything like that. So when he didn't speak of what he had done when Ultimate Drako had sent him away, Raph thought nothing of it.

Then the screaming started.

* * *

It tore through the silence and darkness of the lair like a crack of thunder — the sound of a soul being rent apart in its anguish.

The first thing Raphael did was fall out of his hammock, landing with an uncomfortable thud on the piles of pillows he kept underneath it. Groaning under his breath, he launched himself at the doorway to his room and padded out onto the walkway outside.

"I'm on it!" he called as he passed Leo's bedroom.

A week ago, he would never have believed that his quiet, shy brother could make the noises he had been making over the past six nights. Every night was the same — after a few hours of peaceful sleep, Donnie began to scream, and he wouldn't stop until someone forcefully woke him from his sleep. And every time he apologized sheepishly, as if he had been caught accidentally using someone else's toothbrush. In the light of day he dismissed it as night terrors, and urged everyone to forget about it.

Kinda hard to forget about it when he did it every night.

Even on the rare occasions when Donnie got angry and yelled at someone, there was a quietness, a restraint to his anger that kept it from ever being too alarming. There was no restraint in the sounds he was making now — raw, wild shrieks that stretched on longer and longer, until they made Raph's throat ache with sympathetic pain.

He raced into Donatello's room at top speed and quickly scaled the ladder that led to Donnie's loft bed. His brother was a barely moving lump under a pile of blankets, his head down and his limbs quivering uncontrollably. He let out another bloodcurdling scream, which rattled Raph's nerves — not the sound itself, but the fact that it was coming from Donnie's throat.

"Don! Donnie!" he shouted, seizing his brother and rolling him back onto his carapace. His hands locked on Don's shoulders, and he gave him a sharp, neck-cracking shake. "Donnie, wake up! Wake the shell up!"

The screams cut off abruptly. A moment later, Raph felt a shudder run through his brother's body, and Donnie made a sound halfway between a gasp and a sob.

"R-Raph?" he whispered.

"Yeah, Don, it's just me."

"It's dark — I couldn't see you—"

"Well, I'm here. You were makin' a racket again."

"I'm — I'm sorry," Don breathed. "You can go back to bed now—"

"I ain't going."

"What?"

"I want to hear it."

"Hear — what?"

"It. The reason. I want you to tell me why you're screamin' yourself hoarse every single night since we got back. I ain't leaving until you do."

He listened in silence to Don's gasping breaths as he tried to reorient himself. Then he felt the touch of Don's finger on the left side of his face. It was gentle, almost hesitant.

"Turn on the light," Don said faintly.

"What?"

"Turn on the light. I want to see your face."

Raphael briefly wondered if this was some ploy to get him out of Don's bedroom, but dismissed the idea. He slid down the ladder and turned on one of the lamps that Donnie had set up in his room for late-night nerd work. It filled the room with a soft glow that even extended up to the loft bed, casting shadows on the wall that swayed slightly as the lamp swung.

By the time Raph got back up, Donnie was sitting upright, his pillow clutched against his stomach. He tried to smile, but the gaunt, hollow-eyed look of his face made the gesture look more ghastly than reassuring.

"I'm—I'm feeling better, Raph. You really should—"

"Oh, no you don't," Raph said, springing onto the bed and crossing his legs. "Leo might go away and leave you alone when he heard that tripe, but not me. You're gonna tell me what's wrong with you, or I'm gonna follow you until you do. I don't care if I gotta sit on your bed and stare atcha all night."

Donatello seemed to wilt at this, and for a moment Raph felt guilty about bullying someone who was clearly so troubled. Can't get the poison out if you don't lance it, he told himself bitterly.

But instead of answering, Don raised his trembling hand again, and touched the area above Raphael's left eye. "You've still got it," he whispered.

Raph remained still and silent as his brother seemed to trace the eye, as if reassuring himself that it was still there. When he started to pull away, Raph seized his wrist and pulled him in closer.

"What the shell happened to you?" he said quietly. "What did you see?"

"You."

Raph blinked, sitting back slightly, and loosening his grip on his brother's arm.

Tears were now streaming openly down Don's face, but his voice was strangely calm. "I went — I went to another world. It was like this world — everybody I know was there or had been there — but it was thirty years into the future."

"Didja meet another you?" Raph said, leaning forward.

"I couldn't. In that universe, I was — I was gone. Nobody seemed to know how or why. But it — it caused changes, Raph. The world was different because I wasn't there — because _we_ weren't there. Not all of us together."

"You ain't makin' sense, Don."

"Shredder won," Don said, his head bowed so low that the quiet words almost went unheard. "In that world, he'd won and the entire world belonged to him, and — and there was barely anyone who could resist him. April was leading a resistance against him, but… it didn't amount to much on their own."

Raph felt his mouth going dry. "And what about us? Were we gone too?"

"Master Splinter was. Casey was. And after that —" Don raised his head slightly. "After that, you and Leo — the other you and the other Leo — fought and left the team. You ended it. Went your separate ways. Hated each other. There wasn't anyone—anyone to fight Shredder."

"That wouldn't happen, Don," Raph said, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder.

"That's just it, Raph. It _did_ happen," Don whispered. "They were — just like we are. But older. Harder. They were — hurt."

"Tell me."

"Leo was… I think he was blind, but I'm not sure. He was covered in scars, all over his face… his chest… all over his body. Mikey — he was different. Harder. Older. He didn't smile anymore… and his arm was gone."

Raph had a feeling he knew what was next. "And me?" he said quietly.

Don looked up at him with a tortured expression in his eyes, as if the words he was saying were wracking him with pain. "You lost—"

"An eye." Raph gently took his brother's hand and guided it to his left eye, letting his fingers trace it. "You don't gotta be upset. It's right here."

More tears welled up in Don's eyes. He ducked his head down, into the shadows, as if he were trying to retreat from his brother's gaze.

Raph was not a touchy-feely person by nature. He preferred to show his feelings for others by fighting — fighting with them, fighting to defend them, or some combination of both. For years he had watched Don's back in battle, defending him from monsters and ninjas alike, knowing that his brother wasn't as adept a fighter as he was. That was how he showed how he felt for Donnie.

But on this night, he decided to make an exception. Don looked crumpled, as though the weight of his experiences was slowly crumbling away his bones and leaving him a hollow husk. He hunched forward, his eyes staring at nothing, silent and still.

Raph leaned forward and wrapped his arms tightly around his brother's shoulders, drawing Don close to his chest. Close enough to feel his brother's faint shaking, hear the catch in his breathing as he tried not to cry. After a moment of hesitation, he felt Don's arms rise and loop around him as well, clutching at his shell with desperate fingers.

"But that ain't all, is it?" Raph said quietly. "That's bad, but it ain't enough to make you scream every night."

"No — it's not. I got them to — got them to team up with me again, all three of them. And we came up with a way to destroy Shredder once and for all."

"Did it work?"

"Y-yes." The catch in his voice was back.

"Shredder died."

"Y-yes."

Raph closed his eyes, and waited for what he knew was coming.

"And so did — so did all of you," Don whispered. "I couldn't stop it. I saw all of you die, one by one — Mikey was killed by robots, then Leo was stabbed by Karai. And you — she killed you too."

"Did you kill her?"

"April did."

"Go, April," Raph said with a grim smile.

He felt Donnie tremble against him, and heard another quivering breath drawn in his ear. "I couldn't save you," he whispered. "The world fell apart because of me — because I wasn't there — and all three of you died because — because I wasn't able to save you."

"Stop sayin' that," Raph said roughly, holding his brother tighter. "You said it was another world, right? Another universe. It wasn't me who died, it was him — the other Raph. Same with the other Leo and the other Mikey. And the Donnie who wasn't there… he was the other Donnie, someone who ain't you. It wasn't your fault. I don't care how much like us they were — they weren't us."

Don had gone still and quiet. Raph turned his head so he could speak more directly in Don's ear.

"And you gotta stop blaming yourself for what happened. I know you. If you coulda saved them all, you would've."

"I can't stop seeing them," Don whispered, his eyes wide and sightless. "Every night when I close my eyes — it's not so bad in the daytime, when I can distract myself and try to rationalize it away — but at night I can't stop seeing them. Seeing you. And every time, I can't stop thinking that it's my fault. It never stops. It never changes. It always — it always ends the same way — and it ends with me losing everything."

"You ain't gone," Raph whispered. "You're right here with us, and that's where you'll stay. I got both my eyes. Mikey's got both arms. Leo ain't got a mark on him. And we're all together, and gonna stay that way." He gently rubbed his hand on Don's carapace. "Just keep tellin' yourself that it wasn't you, it wasn't us, it wasn't our world."

"I don't know if I can do that," Don said faintly. "I can't make my brain stop seeing what happened."

Raph sighed, resting his chin on his brother's shoulder. He knew what he had to do. Carefully he rolled Donnie back onto his shell until his head met the pillow, never letting go of his brother as he did so. For a moment the pain left Don's eyes, replaced by confusion.

"What are you doing, Raph?" he said.

"I'm sleepin' here tonight," Raph said, uncurling beside him with a groan, and pulling the blanket over them both. "After hearin' what you went through, I ain't gonna leave you by yourself." He paused. "And maybe when you wake up, you can see I got both my eyes, and remind yourself that I'm me, not him."

Don smiled slightly. "Not the other Raph."

"Exactly."

"Thanks, Raph. I'm sorry — sorry I woke you up."

"With what you saw over there? I might've done the same thing," Raph said, resting his head on his bent arm, with the other one curled around Donatello. "Now go to sleep."

He remained awake, with Don cradled against his arm, until his brother's shaky breaths evened out with the regularity of sleep. Then Raph gently pulled the blanket up to his brother's chin, nestled down beside him, and closed his own eyes.


End file.
